an annual session of reflexions and discus
sions on literary translation and has a fine
International College of Literary Transla
tors. Pichot was more energetic than scru
pulous. He did a great deal of useful work
to introduce English and
American literature to the French reading
public. He translated many books himself,
and he edited the Revue Britannique,
which lived, so to speak, on the absence
of any legislation about international copy
right; that is, he printed in French transla
tions articles which had appeared in British
and American periodicals; thus he did not
have to pay a single penny or cent to any
of his contributors, who were sufficiently
repaid, he claimed, by the honour he did
them when he made them known in his
own country. Among the books Pichot
translated was David Copperfield. He
advocated and practised the almost unre
stricted authority of the translator over the
text: he allowed himself to omit, to insert,
to modify in any way he saw fit, to elimi
nate obnoxious characters, to improve Dic
kens's writing, Dickens having been too
much addicted, he asserted, to anglicisms
unsuitable for the - obviously much more
refined - French taste. Yet Pichot was by
no means devoid of knowledge and even
talent. And the title he coined for his
translation of David Copperfield was a
stroke of genius; he called it, felicitously,
Le Neveu de ma Tante, 'My Aunt's Nep
hew'; another French translation of the
same novel, by Jean-Marie Chopin, a
diplomat who worked and wrote in Saint-
Petersbourg - I mean Leningrad no, I
mean Saint-Petersbourg once more - in any
case, Chopin, Pichot's rival, followed suit
and called his translation La nièce du
pêcheur, 'The Fisherman's Niece'. There
have been literally dozens of later French
translations of David Copperfield.
Neither Pichot nor Chopin were recruited
by Louis Hachette, the publisher who
launched the first complete and authorized
French edition of Dickens's works. He
opened negotiations with the English nove
list in December 1855; Dickens was then
staying in Paris; a contract was signed on
February 1, 1856; on April 13 Dickens
attended a dinner to meet the people he
called his 'French dressers'; he was in an
optimistic mood, at least on the surface; he
was not too much disheartened by failing
to understand what one of them was saying
to him in a foreign language which he
thought must be Russian; the poor old man
was in fact, Dickens discovered, attemp
ting to speak English. Dickens eventually
addressed his assembled translators in a
neat little speech in French. He later
issued favourable comments on one of the
Hachette versions, which he cannot have
examined at any depth; but then his know
ledge of French, however creditable, may
not have been sufficient to make him a
reliable judge of translations of his own
work.
In any case, Dickens received 500 francs
per volume for his earlier works (written
before any international copyright treaty
had come into force) and 1000 francs per
volume for the more recent novels. Refe
rence was made, not of course to the Bern
Convention of 1887, which was to create
international copyright legislation, but to
the pioneering Anglo-French agreement of
1852. In all cases, the translators had to
make do with 250 francs per volume.
Weekly conferences were held among
them, chaired by the general editor of the
series, Paul Lorain; they called in the help
of one Mr Fleming, Hachette's expert on
translation. The translators seem to have
been rather haphazardly chosen. Lorain
was a man of some literary expertise and
many gifts, but his having written on
primary education, and taught Latin orato
ry, did not fully qualify him for his new
job. He may not have quite deserved the
compliment paid to him by Dickens's
'Address of the English Author to the
French Public', where Lorain is called 'an
accomplished gentleman, perfectly
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